One thing that I've noticed while perusing the plethora of pages out there is that so many of them now have some sort of collection of the "hate mail" that they've received. Not only is the verbatim hate mail there, but the rebuttal from the author of the page, as well.

Why?

The only "hate mailbag" that I've ever seen that was even mildly amusing is the one on That Cracker's Crazy. The others all seem to be a less amusing take-off on her style of defusing the hate mail senders. Why did this suddenly become cool?

I have news for you, everyone: receiving hate mail does not validate your intellectual superiority. In fact, on most of the pages that I've seen, it actually takes away from my previous assessment of the author's intelligence. This kind of thing is just too typical of the trend that I'm seeing so often these days on the Net: cynicism. When did this become cool? There can't be that many misanthropic people out there. That leads me to believe that at least three-quarters of these people are lying.

In these collections, hate mail (or sometimes guestbook entries) are posted, and are then taken apart line by line by the recipient and "defused." Much of the time, the hate mail senders send poorly written, grammatically incorrect e-mails. Of course, the recipient then defends him/herself with some "witty" response and throws in something about the sender's poor typing skills or bad grammar. Most of the time, these responses are just another way to subtly boost the author's ego and perpetuate that oh-so-cool "cynical" image for which the author is striving.

I don't understand why this is so "cool." It just goes along with what I was saying in my 11-27 daily update about cynicism and how it's the latest trend in both cyberspace and society. Well, you know what cynicism is? It's a defense mechanism. "I'll push them away before they can push me away. No, wait a second, I know! I'll use reverse psychology and tell them that I thrive on hate mail. Then I'll start to believe it myself, so that when they do send it, I'll be too worried about how to make my rebuttal to be upset." It's gotten so that people warp their own opinions in order to be as offensive as possible just so that they can receive hate mail and use it on their sites to boost their images.

I can only recall one time in the past year that I've sent actual hate mail to someone whom I didn't know just based on their webpage. I don't even send constructive criticism anymore, because I know that they'll twist that around and use that to inflate their swollen heads even more. I'd just like to be the first to say that I don't like cynicism, and I don't think that it's cool. There are plenty of "cynical" pages that I go to every day - some can even be found on my links page - that I actually like, because under all of the image-boosting rhetoric, there's some substance to them. And this doesn't apply to all pages that are like this. But I'd say that the grand majority of those authors that are trying so hard to get that cynical, misanthropic image need to get a clue and get a life.

Oh, and one more thing - knocking someone for their grammar or typing skills doesn't make you appear intelligent. It makes you appear as if all that you care about is inflating your own already over-inflated ego. And sometimes appearances aren't deceiving.